Musicians and stage behaviours, habits and trivia

I hate smiling musicians... rock, folk, not an issue with bluesmen;-), classical... pianists, violinists, guitar players... I could shot a (smiling) piano-player.

What the hell pushes a (sadly) famous new-age-ish italian piano player to ALWAYS smile like an illuminated Bodhisattva, while going up and down the keyboard?

Maybe the wages coming from his (automotive) advertising campaigns...

This quite silly, outrageously false pose and attitude is plagueing modern music, as I repeat, playing is tremendously serious stuff... and on MTV or theaters worldwide, you see those lobotomized (false) happy zombies... moving their heads like dummy bears at the zoo.

Jokes (...) apart, like a doctor is taught about how to deal with illness and death, a musician is taught on how to perform, deal with audience and its dynamics... how many times to bow and if and when, depending on hand-clapping density, give an encore or more.

... but, playing, I wish to underline, is a difficult and time-consuming process and path and the most rewarding act for a musicians is when the most terrible pieces are played like the easiest tune on earth... I remember Paul Badura-Skoda, Hopkinson Smith or Mtislav Rostropovitsh while performing: they were like on a different universe, in direct relationship with Bach's Himself... yes, sometimes suffering, puffing, BUT still quietly dealing with technique and skill and art as the highest of human things, serious as death itself.

... BUT never, ever showing a false, forced, studied and tried at the mirror, "Happy Smile"!

The naked, supremely intense and straight-as-an-arrow beauty of Music was and is WELL enough to enlighten any stage, theater and audience worldwide.

World needs more (unsmiling) Miles and his music and less (too much smiling and hairy) A. and his hyper-sugar-fingerbuster/keyboard gym muzak...

... ah!